Clarisse Thorn

I write and speak about subcultures, sexuality, and new media.

Tonight I had Thanksgiving dinner with my mother and her boyfriend. Some friends of my mother attended, one of whom is a lesbian who I’ll call Kay. Kay attended dinner with her mother, who is unaware of Kay’s sexual orientation. One of the reasons Kay’s mom doesn’t know about Kay’s sexual orientation is that Kay’s mom has already behaved quite badly towards Kay’s elder sister, who is an out-of-the-closet lesbian.

I knew this whole situation going in, and one thing that struck me was how much of a nice person Kay’s mom is. I mean … she’s really nice. I mean, she clearly tries to be a good person. She also tried really hard to help me do the dishes. (I didn’t let her because I wanted them all to myself.)

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how to engage with people who have done bad things, or who are currently doing things I think are bad (like shaming their lesbian daughters). It wouldn’t have been right to throw my sex-positive ideas on the table while talking to Kay’s mom — mostly because Kay specifically asked me not to, ahead of time. But. The most powerful tool for getting people to reconsider their stigma against alternative sexuality is personal engagement. Don’t I have some responsibility here? Is there something I can do?

Other examples of this are rife. One very intense, very important issue I grappled with this week was having a friend email me to inform me that another friend — someone I like and admire a lot — has been credibly accused of sexual assault by a person who will never press charges. This has come up before in my life … every time it’s a little different, and yet so many things are the same: a person is assaulted, the news gets out among friends, the survivor doesn’t press charges, there is confusion among the friends about how to act, eventually things die down, and I feel as though I should have done more.

When I was in high school, one of my closest male friends raped a female acquaintance of mine. She didn’t press charges and they later had a romance that was, to all appearances, consensual. I pieced events together slowly — he did acknowledge what he’d done, though never directly to me. I didn’t know what to do, at the time, and I still feel as though I should have done so much more. He and I were so close. I never had the nerve to directly talk to him about what happened, because — even though we never talked directly about it — I saw evidence that he felt terrible about it, and I was sure that I could devastate him by talking about it more. But still … I should have talked to him.

I also feel as though I should have supported her more, but I don’t know what I could have said. There were people who told her that she shouldn’t be having a consensual relationship with her rapist. It seemed wrong to tell her that — I felt like it eroded her agency, attacked her right to choose — so I didn’t say it. If I had said it, though, would that have been helpful to her? What could I have done to be a better resource for her? Especially given that I was such close friends with him?

I was young(er), but that’s no excuse. Then again, what am I excusing? I did nothing. But I should have done more.

Now, again, I have a friend, a good friend, who assaulted someone. It’s a friend in the local S&M community. I don’t know the survivor at all. I have to talk to my friend about it, but what do I say, and what happens next? Feminism instructs us that we should listen to the voices of survivors, that community mores and community condemnation are what stops rape from happening. I believe these things to be true; and there are people close to me who have survived rape, and I really want to make sure I’m doing everything I can to ensure that rape stops happening. But I intensely wish that I had more guidance on what exactly to say, how exactly to act, to change the mores.

I emailed my ex-boyfriend Chastity Boy for advice, because he’s got one of the finest ethical minds I’ve ever been lucky enough to engage with. Here’s part of what he wrote back:

I’ve tried to distill your messages into a few questions, and I ended up with “How does one parse a situation in which a friend, and an otherwise noble person, seems to have done serious wrong?” and “What are a person’s moral obligations in this case?”

Nobody is composed of unmixed goodness or evil, no matter how much of a paragon/fiend 1) they seem to be or 2) their principles require. People we respect and love are not forces of nature or avatars of their cause of choice, no matter how thoroughly they embody it to us. I don’t say this because I think you haven’t considered it, but because I know I’ve had a lot of trouble absorbing it over the years and think it might therefore bear restating to others, too.

As an individual, a person has a relatively large degree of freedom in action and association. I think where this case becomes truly difficult to consider is when we bring in justice and the community. Because the means of enforcement of the rules of these communities is so interpersonal, one’s interpersonal actions take on an unusual role of community-level justice as well as merely justice between two people. I can’t see how it could ever be good to allow things like this to just slide. Honestly, I’m not sure what else you can do but (as you suggest in one of your messages) politely ask your friend about their take on the story. If nothing else, it will demonstrate that people are paying attention to this thing and might give you some insight into their character and opinions of the issue.

He’s right. I agree. But. What now? How do I ask, what do I say? How can I tell if my friend has dealt with whatever healing has to take place in order for such assaults not to happen again?

UPDATE, 2012: There are a lot of resources out there on “restorative justice” or “transformative justice,” a phrase that describes initiatives that work with assault perpetrators outside the criminal justice system. Here’s a list of a bunch of those resources. End of update

* * *

Tough questions. But it is all Thanksgiving and stuff, and though I try to avoid mouthing pieties … thinking about these questions has reminded me that I truly do have an incredible amount to be thankful for. And how I want my work — sex-positive and otherwise — to be shaped by the things I’m thankful for.

+ I am thankful for how open and accepting my parents have been about my own sexuality, as well as my choice to engage in sex-positive activism; I can’t imagine how much more stressful it would be to engage in all my various sex-positive projects and writing if I didn’t have their support. I hope to contribute to a society where people can have more open, honest, and understanding conversations about sexuality with their parents. (There are limits, of course. I’m pretty sure my parents don’t usually read my blog, especially not the more intense posts. And it’s probably better that way.)

+ I am thankful for the time I spent in Africa, for all the things I learned there, and for my relationship with Chastity Boy. People who put so much thought into morality are hard to find; CB challenged me in a number of ways, and I was thrilled by how seriously he engaged with my views on sexual morality (many of which were rather new to him). America’s views on sexual morality hurt so many people — from rape survivors, to sex workers, to alternatively-sexual people like me. I’d like to contribute to a society where deep moral thought is encouraged, and in particular, to a society with less harmful views on sexual morality.

+ I am overwhelmingly thankful for the privilege I enjoy — education, class, race, a huge number of safety nets. I hope that I can put that privilege to good use. It was scary to leave Africa partly because I was afraid I was giving up on a life path by which I could really do a lot of good, but now that I’ve been back for a while, it’s incredibly clear that it was the best personal choice I could make … and that there is a lot of potential good to be done here, too. I sometimes feel like I should be putting my effort into “more important” activist type things — as if, for example, the stuff I worked on in Africa “wins” over sex-positive activism in America, when we put things on some kind of social justice “scale”. Or sometimes I feel like I should be looking for the “biggest” issues to work on, such as global warming, which is an actual threat to our species. Or sometimes I even worry that sex-positive feminism is “too privileged” a field to meaningfully be described as “activism” …. (Yeah … in some ways I have privilege issues, I think.)

Still, while I feel committed to keeping my ecological footprint small and all that good stuff, it seems clear that my personal loves and interests and skills are best-suited to sex-positive feminism. I do hope that I can keep the big picture in mind, and stay at least somewhat humble about my approach; and at the very least, acknowledging privilege seems like a good place to start with that. I ought to be thankful that I have privilege that allows me to do things with my time that I find fascinating, rewarding, and important.

+ And hey, reader: thanks to you, too. I learn so much from people who read my work, especially the regular commenters. I heart all y’all. Thank you for your perspectives.

* * *

Part of this piece is included in my awesome collection, The S&M Feminist: Best Of Clarisse Thorn. You can buy The S&M Feminist for Amazon Kindle here or other ebook formats here or in paperback here.

17 responses to “Social responsibility, activism, and giving thanks”

What a great post. Those are big questions. It’s easy to demand justice and intervention for the rapist/assailant/sexuality shamer, but in real life nothing is that simple. Still, I believe that asking questions, reacting to it is the right answer. There is no right way of conduct with a situation like this – and if you would decide on the road beforehand, you wouldn’t really be listening to them and would probably lose all chances to affect them.

I, also, have begun to think that my road might be in the sex positive feminism. I am already an educator and can do a lot with that, but I want to focus on it more. Your example gives me strength, though you’re far away from Europe where I live (and it’s really different here), that there is a place for sex positivism and that it’s not only needed but received in the community(ies).

A couple of my friends, X and Y, had a bit of a screwed up relationship awhile back. When talking with X about it she mentioned a particularly screwed up situation that sounded much like, and that she viewed as, sexual assault. I had been friends with Y for a number of years, and I got her permission to talk to him about it. So, I brought it up, followed by, more or less, “What the hell, dude? Not cool!” and, of course, he explained his side of things.

Realistically, I don’t know what happened. I don’t know if what he did was deliberate, or if there was a misunderstanding. He gave a version that seemed plausible, and I think I remember him attempting to talk to me about what happened around the time it happened, which lends something to what he said. I pointed out to him that, misunderstanding or not, her hurt is real, and offered to facilitate some communication on either end. He declined with reasons I would consider acceptable under more mundane circumstances. Not really sure how I feel about them in context. I also made it clear to him that I wasn’t concluding either story was likely the case, and would remain agnostic on this, so long as it was the only case.

In short, I tried to find a line between being respectful of her experience, not simply attacking him, having him describe his POV and having him experience some amount of social censure over it. I’m not entirely sure of how well I pulled that off, but the theory seems about right.

Fessing up to and dealing with the wrongs you have committed can be very difficult. And I think it can be even moreso when you’ve committed something that is generally considered by our culture to be an unforgivable wrong. And even moreso when it is demonized as something that only horrible nasty people do. Rape, abuse, etc.

I recall an experience with an ex of mine where we were cuddling and watching a movie together. She started sucking on my ear. And for whatever reason, I just felt extremely uncomfortable, and really wanted her to stop. But I didn’t feel like I could voice that, so I just didn’t react and tried to keep watching the movie, hoping she would get the message. She didn’t. She kept going further and further (getting more and more sexual in how and where she was touching me), me feeling more and more uncomfortable but not feeling like I had any options.

Eventually it got to the point where I either had to say something, or go along with it. And since I didn’t feel like I could say anything, I went along with it. I don’t think I’d ever felt so intensely uncomfortable having sex before. And afterward I just felt icky.

By some definitions this might (?) be qualified as rape. And it certainly tainted sexual interactions between us from that point on. But this ex of mine is not a bad person. And the words “rape”, “assault” etc. have a lot of baggage, including presumptions of malice, bad character, etc.

So yeah… I share your confusion on the best way to address these issues, especially when they involve people you care about.

And hey, reader: thanks to you, too. I learn so much from people who read my work, especially the regular commenters. I heart all y’all. Thank you for your perspectives.

Likewise, I am thankful for you and your blog. It is not common to find online feminism that is willing to genuinely engage men’s issues. :-)

Realistically, I don’t know what happened. I don’t know if what he did was deliberate, or if there was a misunderstanding. He gave a version that seemed plausible, and I think I remember him attempting to talk to me about what happened around the time it happened, which lends something to what he said.

Yeah. I don’t know anything about your friends’ situation, of course. But this reminds me of something:
I think people often think that their nonverbal signals are a lot clearer than they actually are. And based on my own experiences, I think this is often because when someone (like myself) gives a nonverbal signal, they often aren’t thinking about the larger context, such as similar(ish) signals they’ve given in the past that may have had different meanings at the time, or things they’ve told a partner to do in the past, and even cultural norms/expectations. And for the person giving the signals, it’s often not easy to see how those things will combine to affect how their partner will interpret something.

So, to take the example from my comment above, I frequently told my partner that I appreciate it when she takes the sexual initiative and a dominant role. And numerous times in the past there was this thing she did where she sucked on my ear/neck that just drove me crazy (in a good way), but I always took a very passive role when she was doing it. And I think it also is not common for people to consider that their regular sexual partner could be made uncomfortable by their touch, or the prospect of sex/sexual contact with them, especially when sex has been really positive recently.

But in my own recollection of my story above (and even in the way that I think/feel about it in general), I left a lot of that out. That still doesn’t make my ex’s actions “ok”, exactly. But I also don’t think it’s appropriate to dismiss those factors as irrelevant. People make mistakes. And nonverbal signals aren’t always clear, even when we think they are.

I think in general it’s really important to acknowledge how much of a role misunderstandings can play in these issues. (And I think that’s also a really strong argument in favor of encouraging at least some level of explicit verbal communication, even if it’s just to pre-agree on what certain signals mean.)

Not getting into current issues, but I think a widespread adoption of “affirmative consent” would take this a HUGE step forward. If we are taught that we have to give active consent, and that consent is not just the absence of a no, then many of these types of activities could be avoided.

I ESPECIALLY hate the “well, I didn’t say no, so I guess it was okay.” Our legal definitions in this country have created a state that it seems a woman can only be raped because “she didn’t say no hard enough” or “she didn’t try hard enough.”

I read an article that discussed unwanted by consensual sexual acts, and wanted but non consensual sexual acts. Things are not as clear cut as “no.”

Our legal definitions in this country have created a state that it seems a woman can only be raped because “she didn’t say no hard enough” or “she didn’t try hard enough.”

I’d like to note that this is not limited to women. It’s a general cultural attitude about sex. Particularly within existing sexual relationships, but also outside of them.

Women are statistically more likely to be raped by men than men are to be raped by women, and therefore women end up being more impacted by this cultural attitude. But the attitude itself is not about women.

Not getting into current issues, but I think a widespread adoption of “affirmative consent” would take this a HUGE step forward. If we are taught that we have to give active consent, and that consent is not just the absence of a no, then many of these types of activities could be avoided.

Right, “yes means yes”, so to speak. And yeah, I agree.

Although I think there are realities of human nature within long-term relationships, in particular, that make this something that people have to consciously work at. It’s not as simple as just telling people “affirmative consent is necessary”. That will have limited impact. It reminds me of this:http://www.boingboing.net/2010/10/30/protest-sign-calls-f.html

To make an analogy, it’s probably not hard to get people to look out for affirmative consent to a kiss when a relationship is new. But as things progress, people naturally settle into a rhythm where it’s acceptable for either party to simply kiss the other person unless otherwise stated. And most of the time this isn’t a problem. And it feels natural. People get used to certain types of repeated interactions with another person. In a nut-shell:
– Old-hat interactions = yes unless no.
– New-ish interactions = no unless yes.
I think that’s pretty typical of how human beings work. And I think it’s something that requires actively working to counter.

So I don’t think spreading a “yes means yes” relationship dynamic is as easy as just telling people (even highly receptive people) to follow the principle. This is the kind of thing that people might need full-on workshops for. And even then, they’ll need to really work at it.

It’s also not at all clear to me that it’s inappropriate for two people who prefer the “old-hat is okay unless one of us indicates otherwise” approach to go that route. I think, rather, it’s important for people to be aware of the choice they are making, and what the potential ramifications/risks are, and that there are other ways of doing things.

@RogueBambi — Aww, thanks. I’ll be interested to hear about how your own path goes. Being a sexuality resource is not a clearly defined career choice, and everyone goes about it differently.

@Kimberly — Did you feel sure that he had taken what was said to heart, and was working on whatever factors had led to the situation?

@AmandaLP — I completely agree that adoption of affirmative consent is the long-term solution, but it’s definitely long-term. I wish there were more exact discussion of how to act in the short and medium term, as with situations like this.

@Cessen — Eventually it got to the point where I either had to say something, or go along with it. And since I didn’t feel like I could say anything, I went along with it. I don’t think I’d ever felt so intensely uncomfortable having sex before. And afterward I just felt icky.

Yeah, I’ve been in that situation about a million times. It got better after getting into BDSM and internalizing the safeword thing, but it really can be just amazingly difficult to communicate when you want a partner to stop, especially if they’re doing something you normally like. (Actually, this last came up a lot when I was just starting with BDSM, too, especially with one partner who wasn’t really that into it, so when he did want to do it I’d feel as though I had to encourage him even if I wasn’t in the mood right then … very icky dynamic. I found that I had an easier time once I started moving around in the wider subculture. Don’t know if that works for everyone though. It probably doesn’t. Scarcity affects sexuality in weird ways.)

Yeah, I’ve been in that situation about a million times. It got better after getting into BDSM and internalizing the safeword thing, but it really can be just amazingly difficult to communicate when you want a partner to stop, especially if they’re doing something you normally like.

Yeah, that last bit is something I can really relate to.

And scarcity… yeah, goodness. That is my personal “I’ve experienced that a million times” bit. In fact, I believe some of my first comments on this blog were about that.

(Incidentally, my anecdote above was not a scarcity situation. And the biggest resulting difference is that in scarcity situations, I will consent pretty much right off the bat, even if I don’t really want to. Whereas in the type of situation in my anecdote above, I try to communicate that I don’t want to do it, but feel unable to.)

@Clarisse, I’m by no means sure. But I sometimes have problematically high standards wrt labelling myself as “sure” about something. He denies any ill-will, intent of sexual assault etc, and seems to feel like he made a really dumb mistake. Assuming it went down as he said, feeling pretty dumb about it seems like a reasonable response. I don’t know if there’s been any processing of the event by him since I talked to him about it.

it’s late, but I, too, would like to thank you for providing a space and having an open mind for such spirited discussions :)

I’m sorry to hear about the problem you’re facing here. If there’s one thing I learnt from the experience in which I suggested to a female friend she had been sexually assaulted/raped (according to some feminist consent standards, though not legal standards), and her adamant denial thereof, it is that dichotomies are bad, particularly in situations in which there are often incongruent versions of reality that are both at least potentially equally valid. Chastity Boy is right that it’s also unfair to class people in a good/bad dichotomy, but this is very common in feminist commentary with respect to consent issues. You said as much in a thread over at Thomas’ blog once.

If I had to have this talk with your friend, I’d mention complexity, and perspectives, and your desire to find out and evaluate all of the complexity, the potentially blurred lines and an openness to accept that you may not be able to see a clear line even after your evaluation of the complexity.

I have a little experience with a community holding an abuser accountable to his abuse outside of the criminal justice system – I can share what little I know about the process, if you’re interested. It definitely took more than one person, though, and that’s the direction my advice was going to go in – that you find yourself a few more people to strategize with who are interested in holding the abuser accountable, if possible. If it’s ok with the person who experienced the abuse, can you link up with someone(s) else? That way at least you can support each other (this ends up being really hard on everyone) and put more pressure to bear on the abuser to own up and possibly make restituion.

I have Asperger’s Syndrome, so my own opinion probably doesn’t apply well to anyone else and should be taken with a grain of salt. Still, I do have two things to say:

Q: “How can I tell if my friend has dealt with whatever healing has to take place in order for such assaults not to happen again?”

A: You ask. How can you know if you don’t? (Well, some people who aren’t me might be able to, but if you’re asking the question, then you don’t know the answer; QED.)

Q: “How do I ask, what do I say?”

A: There’s no magical formula. (If there were magical formulas, having AS would be a hell of a lot easier.) If they’re your friend, they should put up with you being awkward and imposing and bringing up touchy subjects. If you hurt a little when you mean to help, they should forgive you; that’s what friends do. In reality, of course, things don’t always work that way, but always trying to help and always forgiving those who meant no harm seems to me like a good way to live your life. If someone else reacts differently, well, maybe they can at least learn a lesson about friendship and forgiveness along the way, yes?

As for people who aren’t friends, there’s no easy way to go about any of this, so being straightforward without being accusatory/judgemental in tone is probably the only option.

I dunno if that helps any. I’ve got a more involved story that might, but it’s not one that I can post publicly; you have my card if you want to hear it.

Having had some more sleep and re-read the comments above mine a little more thoroughly, I ought to add that I agree with pretty much everything that everyone else has said (at least insofar as I am knowledgeable enough to and capable of doing so), so I don’t feel the need to repeat much of what’s gone before. However, as someone who does have a disability that makes nonverbal communication tricky, I do want to make the following notes of agreement:

Nonverbal signals simply aren’t going to be received by everyone under all circumstances, even by people who don’t have Asperger’s. And people who do have AS might not tell you about their disability.

Nonverbal signals aren’t always what they seem to be when you see them. Part of this will be on the receiving end for the same reasons as I have laid out above and Cessen gave in one of his comments. Part of this will be on the sending end because some people are just really bad at nonverbal communication.

As a solution, affirmative consent makes an excellent default, of course. Two people in an established relationship can alter that to whatever arrangement they want, as far as I’m concerned, so long as it’s clear to both of them and they agree on it.

And now something a little more original to me:

When using affirmative consent, there’s still a potential problem: “Yes” only means “yes” if it’s not forced. Someone might not mean to be pressuring their partner, but if they’re using affirmative consent because they can’t guarantee that their own body language is saying what they want it to and they can’t read their partner’s body language reliably enough to know if their partner feels pressured, they have to be able to absolutely trust their partner to answer honestly. And they can only do that if they know that their partner trusts them to accept that answer and never retaliate for a “no.” That seems to me like a level of trust you can’t expect of everybody as immediately as you might be willing to have sex with them, depending on your preferences.

Personally, I can try to solve this by externalizing the trust to some degree; as a Catholic, I can say “I have made a holy vow to always leave when asked, and I try to interpret that as broadly as possible,” and those who know me at least well enough to realize that I take my faith seriously can then trust me to accept an honest answer of “no” for reasons that don’t have to do with our interpersonal relationship, which might not have that level of trust. Obviously this won’t work for people who don’t have my religious background or the rules for holy vows memorized, though.

@Katie — I’d be interested to hear what you know about the process, although this situation is complicated by the fact that I don’t personally know the assault survivor and that person is not part of any of my communities (they live somewhere else).

@Are you really a II? — And they can only do that if they know that their partner trusts them to accept that answer and never retaliate for a “no.” That seems to me like a level of trust you can’t expect of everybody as immediately as you might be willing to have sex with them, depending on your preferences.

As a non-Catholic, one thing that I do in similar situations to attempt to make space for partners is that I simply make it very clear that it’s totally cool with me if my partner says no. For example:

* “Could you expand on that? It’s okay to say no, of course!”
* “Would you like to do X? If you’d rather not, then that’s fine.”

I’m also a fan of asking for consent even for very small acts at first, so as to set a maximally consensual standard. For example:

Yep, I’m a II. It’s on my birth certificate, social security card, drivers license, and everything. One of my greatest disappointments was discovering that this didn’t make my dad a I. (And yes, if I’m named after a parent, I should be a Jr. There’s a story behind that . . . but isn’t there always?) Oddly, I seem to know more IIIs and IVs than IIs or Jrs. Or maybe the Roman numerals like using their suffix more than the others, so I’m just aware of it more.

As for your points about my actual comment, maybe I’m just socially anxious/paranoid, but as much as I try to make it clear that someone can say no, it does make me wonder why someone would trust me to be honest about being okay with “no” unless they already trusted me before I said so. Then again, that’s the sort of thing I realize is logical but not how most people actually work. I have noticed that being obviously anxious and scared does help many people trust me more, though. Which is good, because I usually am anxious and scared, and faking my actual feelings (since I have minimal/unusual actual body language as part of my AS) is often much more comfortable than faking something else. . . .

[…] How Sexualization Replaces Opportunity with Obligation.” Perhaps ironically, when I once wrote an agonized post about moral accountability and how to deal with friends who have done really bad things, the most thoughtful and […]

About Clarisse

On the other hand, I also wrote a different book about the subculture of men who trade tips on how to seduce and manipulate women:

I give great lectures on my favorite topics. I've spoken at a huge variety of places — academic institutions like the University of Chicago; new media conventions like South By Southwest; museums like the Museum of Sex; and lots of others.

I established myself by creating this blog. I don't update the blog much anymore, but you can still read my archives. My best writing is available in my books, anyway.

I've lived in Swaziland, Greece, Chicago, and a lot of other places. I've worked in game design, public health, bookstores, and digital journalism. Now I live in San Francisco; I make my living as a media strategist, editor, and writer.